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Introduction Obscurity - Invader I read up till the middle of Chapter 2. Let’s take this apart, slowly. Your very first paragraph: “He first heard the screeching of the train stopping. Then, he heard the confused murmurs of the Matoran around him. He then heard the metal door slide open and a gun shot ring throughout the compartment. He finally heard the thud off a body hit the floor.” You see the problem with this, correct? He, he, he. It would be much better, I think, if you switched up words to describe this character. Another, major, mind you, problem is your sentence structure. Grammar-wise, they are all sound. But, here: Three out of your four sentences in paragraph one are about 10 words long. Though this isn’t a problem in just one paragraph, in the long run, not varying sentence length really creates a sense of monotonality. “He continued to wear the infectious grin. The De-Matoran was still silently trying to grip his weapon. The Matoran was almost there. The De-Matoran had just touched his weapon. He heard someone clear their throat, and the De-Matoran looked up.” Here’s another example of that tone problem. Not only do you not vary sentence length, you also rarely vary sentence pattern. It’s always subject verb, and in that same order, too. Add adverbs! Or, maybe add some sudden, short sentences. This is a scene of action, short sentences out of the blue would be great for conveying some urgency. In that above paragraph, I picture the scene happening, yes, but at a rather slow pace. It loses all sense of action. Oh, and you will see I highlighted a comma. That is what Zany and I dub a “Meyer comma”. You know Twilight? Stephanie Meyer often used many extra commas in that work. You don’t want to be like her. :P So. Whenever you finish your work, read it out loud to yourself. Do you really need to take a big pause there? If not, no need for a comma. Let’s move on to characterization. So, you have a De-Matoran, a Ta-Matoran, and Ga-Matoran. The De-Matoran. Is he pink? Is he a foot tall? Is he secretly a Turaga in disguise? We do not know. He must be a leading character, if not the protagonist, if you have more than a few chapters following actions surrounding him. You need to describe him. Using third person makes this so easy. I’m not saying you have to launch into a Dickens-like expositive paragraph solely for the De-Matoran, nor do you have to do it in the Prologue, even. You just have to do it, and preferably early. Having the De-Matoran as a formless shape until the very end is risky, stylistically. Same goes for the Ga-Matoran. So, she wears a Komau. But does she wear a ballerina tutu? The Ta-Matoran, however, I find a little bit random. I haven’t read all of this story. Is there any explanation later on as to why the Ta-Matoran suddenly starts attacking everyone? Perhaps there’s been a string of crimes lately? If so, then good on you. For the Fire Matoran, you can get away with one or two lines describing his basic outward appearance. A scratchy voice, maybe, or a bad limp. Something like that. Ok, chapter one. “They had gotten the train moving again. They had arrived in Onu-Metru. They had called ahead for an ambulance for the Le-Matoran. He had been carted away to a hospital. Iyre looked around and saw the Ga-Matoran coming towards him.” Same thing again here. I’ll not pinpoint this again. Onepu went to the black sheet, and pulled it off. It revealed a dark green robotic being. One of its legs had been torn off, and its head, which had a red helmet-like thing, was broken apart. It was disturbing to look at. An engineer's nightmare. Another Meyer comma. “Helmet-like thing”. Surely, you can find some other word than “thing”. Aha! The green phrase! Yes! This is what I like. Just those three words lend weight to this entire paragraph, tying it nicely together. “Not pretty, huh?” Said Onepu, noticing Iyre's expression. “Yeah, I get that feeling too,” “Where'd you find it?” Iyre asked, taking his eyes away from the slaughtered robotic carcass on the table to the purple Onu-Matoran next to him. “We found it in a mining site that we were excavating and we found it's body in the collapsed tunnels underground,” he said. “But the odd thing is, it had only been there for two weeks.” “What in Mata Nui's name was it doing down there?” Iyre asked. “We don't know, and we can't look in its data-banks because they were crushed when the tunnel had collapsed,” said Onepu. “But it must've been down there for a reason. Like it was looking for something,” “What would it have been looking for?” Iyre asked. “Your guess is as good as mine. However, there was a branch of the original Archives, dating 100,000,000 years back. That's what it might have been looking for.” Said Onepu. “Alright, thank you. We'll be in touch.” Iyre said, starting to head for the door. You literally just alternated “said” and “asked” for this entire exchange. I don’t know who said this, but there was this one guy who claimed it was alright to continue to use said. Personally, I find this to be a big fat lie. If “said” was the only word we need, they why does “muttered”, “murmured”, “gasped”, “grumbled”, “explained”, “responded”, “returned”, “inquired” etc. exist? Even said itself can be modified with an adverb or a noun. “Said with a hint of exasperation”. “Explained patiently”. “Inquired with a frown on his face”. That aside, the dialogue itself is very conversational, which is why I greened the first two lines. Personally , I like having characters talk without being overly stilted or pompous. Good work here. “The Toa of Iron sat in his iron chair and gazed over the darkening skyline of Metru Nui. He reached over to an iron table and grabbed a glass of Xian Ale. The Toa took a sip and held it in his hand, and he saw the city start to spring into the nightly light. Buildings now bright and obscuring the stars above. He wished they had stayed a little longer, but, the city would be gone soon anyway. His plot was simple, destroy this city, the Main City, if you will, after finding the artifacts buried deep in the earth. And, and. Redundant and. Another Meyer comma. “Buildings… stars above”. Sentence fragment. A anger ''suddenly came over him as he remembered being thrown out of his village as a Matoran. A feeble little weak Fe-Matoran being picked on by the hot-headed Ta-Matoran, that's why Ta-Metru would be the next to go after the Coliseum had been destroyed “, and the Turaga dead. “A anger”. Typo. “He remembered…” We’ll come back to this point. It’s a biggie. “''and the Turaga dead.”'' Run-on sentence. He heard walking behind him, he turned and looked to see the shape of a Po-Matoran coming towards him. The Toa stood up to stare down at his Matoran servant. Sir, you are the next Stephanie Meyer. XD Another one of her commas. “Sir, we have sent out another drone, but it has to make its way under the sewers this time to reach the excavation site, for they have brought in the Oun-Metru Law Enforcement to guard their precious site.” Said the Po-Matoran. “For” sounds a bit… formal. Is this part of the Po-Matoran’s character? Is he quite formal in front of his master? If so, then no problems with “for”. Then, punctuation at the end. It’s comma there, not a period. The Toa of Iron sighed as he was delivered this news. He would have to put his plans on hold if this took too long.” Ok, now, back to the point above. I do not have to know who this Toa of Iron is. You’ve established him as the antagonist, or one of them, and that is good enough as you slowly unravel his dastardly plot at the end or partway through the rest of the story. But why in the world is he suddenly launching into a monologue about his past life?! People just don’t do that. He’s not a stereotypical anime character who goes on for rants from out of nowhere. If you do want him to explain his past life, I highly recommend you give a reason for why he suddenly remembers it. Perhaps he’s drinking, and he remembers as a Matoran that he used to drink a lot since his life sucked. Something like that. ““About 24-hours, don't worry, it won't be very long.” Assured the Po-Matoran.” I was told not to use numbers. That’s just me, not sure how you learned it. Next is, once again, the period at the end of the dialogue, following by a capital. This seems to be a recurring problem. It should be: “….be very long,” assured the Po-Matoran. “Taking a slightly longer sip of his Xian Ale. He thought of his plans again, bigger now, for he knew how long it would take the drone to get to the site. A foul thought crossed his mind, and his chest started to feel heavy as his chest muscles tightened up. He may be a Toa of Iron, but that didn't mean that he was entirely made of it. The Toa was experiencing anxiety.” “''Taking…”'' Sentence fragment. “…bigger now…” What is bigger? His plan or his thoughts? This phrase is a bit awkward. “A foul thought…” Foul here is used out of context. When you think of a foul though, it’s more of an evil idea, or a sinister plot. I think what you’re looking for is a “panicked thought”. “''The Toa was experiencing anxiety''.” This time, your ending sentence isn’t too great. It’s a bit of an obvious understatement. I’d try to spice it up a little, or somehow merge with the previous sentence. “It's time.” She said. The curtains were drawn, the room was dark. He stood in the shadows, as he always did. He nodded and walked out the door. She stood there, and then she made her way back to her desk. She brought up a holographic map of the island of Metru Nui. She knew that the island was going to be targeted, she just didn't know how and didn't know when. She hated it when she didn't know these things. Same dialogue mistake here. And, same monotone-ish, subject verb pattern. A Meyer comma in here as well. She leaned back in her chair and waited for twenty minutes until a red dot started to blink onto the screen. It kept moving and blinking, and getting closer and closer until it stopped in Oun-Metru. A smile escaped from inside her and was spread across her mouth. She quickly got rid of it. That ending sentence works well. Nice job. In one sentence however, three and’s really is a lot of and’s , don’t you think? I’d re-do that sentence. She turned off the hologram and sat back in her chair, and closed her eyes. She needed sleep, because a war was coming, and she needed all the strength she could get for it. Whooo! Three Meyer commas! A redundant and as well. I’d also like to comment here that you are introducing many “mysterious”, unnamed characters. This is getting to a point where you are in danger of being unable to tie everything at the end. Remember, I didn’t read the entire thing. Even so, you’re introducing so many characters here and there it’s getting very hard for the reader to catch up. Chapter two! I’ll try to keep this one short. XD I will skip over any Meyer commas, that dialogue mistake and the repetitive subject-verb pattern. “Who the hell are you?” The Ko-Matoran asked. “Who are you?” Asked Iyre. The Ko-Matoran slapped Iyre. “I asked you first,” he said. “Fine fine, my name is Iyre,” said the De-Matoran. I’d refrain from using the word hell. It just feels… unprofessional when writing. Asked, asked. Said, said. I’ve already addressed this problem. Skip forward a bit: “''A agent” Typo. Next…. Who in the world are Faz and Echo? Wow, there’s a ton of characters now. Who’s a supporting character, who’s a side character? Ok, so, now for an overall look. Here’s where I will also talk about plot. Your plot is heavily smudged since you’re skipping between the viewpoints of just so many characters. I have to be honest with you, it can be a bit hard to follow what’s going on. You really, really have to read it very slowly a couple of times, and not all readers will do that. Now, I see that you made a link to Echo’s page in your story. This is standard wikia procedure, correct? However, I want you to pretend that link doesn’t work for the reader. The reader is unable to access Echo’s, or any of your character pages. If you write with that mentality, I bet you will be much more through with your characters. Lastly, I'm not too great with descriptions, so that's why I choose first person to write with. In first person, you experience the world through the eyes of your character, who may sometimes be too busy to spend time describing how beautiful a tree is. You're in third-person, the narrative voice. You really need to put some short paragraphs describing setting. True enough, we know it's in Metru Nui. But smaller details about your characters' immediate surroundings are so important. That’s all I have to say about ''Obscurity, I hope you’ll walk away with a few bits of advice from my review~! Jump - Artek I finished this story. “It was a gorgeus day on the island of Orious. The birds chirped their regular peaceful melody as the predators of the forest began their daily hunt. The island's lush green trees towered over the life it hid, reaching and almost grasping the sky with it's fresh, soft emerald leaves. The twin suns threw light out to the trees as they hanged proudly within the everlasting blue skies. Clouds of a welcoming shade of grey swam slowly and calmly in this sky. The island of Orious was blooming with beauty.” Nice opening paragraph here. Sets the setting well, I know where we are. Typo, though. “On such wonderful days as this, the Matoran of Orious would go out and enjoy the land's wonders, they would collect it's rich healthy berries, climb it's long jolly trees, walk it's smiling roads, and embrass it's warmth and light. But on this day, the Matoran focused their attention towards something else entirely, on this day they admired and awed at a particularly large tree that's very peak had ascended past the villager's sight. Indeed, this was a big tree, perhaps one of the largest on the island. But it's size is not what made this tree so unusual and amazing, the fact that it had rooted itself within one of the villager's buildings is what made this tree unique.” '' Oooook. Invader has too many commas, you don’t have enough. XD I added commas in red. “wonders, they” This is a run-on sentence. Use a colon instead of a comma here. In fact, you have a problem with run-on sentences. From now on, I will highlight these in BLUE. “It’s” is another major problem. They’re all supposed to be “its”. From now on, these are highlighted in PURPLE. Lastly, I think "smiling" is used a bit awkwardly. Just my opinion. ''“Customers of Roik's Cafe had forgotten completely about their coffee, they stood there gazing at the large bulky tree before them. Almost a minute ago normality reigned, the Matoran had bought their coffee and were just beginning to settle into the morning. Then, a bright flash of green light had erupted from the center of the shop, resulting in a large swirling mass of twisted colors and powerful energies and then, when the moment for realization finally came to the Matoran, this very tree had shot out of this energy pool which led them to their current situation.” '' You’re missing another comma. ''“The scope on Toa Breyol's matatu buzzed and swirled as it focused it's lenses on the large tree within the cafe. Though the Toa was not present in the tree's sudden growth in the cafe, he had quickly caught a glimpse of it from his post within the village. Breyol's head moved up as he continued to scan the tree, and his vision would ascend up the wooden structure until his gaze met it's peak which it eventually did.” '' Matatu. Capitalized. I added the word "and" in a sentence as well. “Breyol was an odd type of Toa, he was what some would call emotionless. He reacted to very little, talked seldom, and kept his gaze forwards towards the horizon, never stopping to reward attention to whoever pestered him. Given this trait, it was rather rare that the Toa of gravity would react to anything, the only thing he had ever reacted to was his transformation into a Toa. But seeing this tree, or more specifically it's peak made Breyol's eye widen slightly in surprise.” ''“Breyol was an odd type…” Good! Descriptions! Very, very good! Gravity, capitalized. And, now that I think about it, “peak” seems to be the wrong word for the top of the tree. Try “canopy” , or “apex”. This bit is just a personal opinion. “What lay on the tree’s peak was a thing, no, a person, and that very soul upon the tree’s peak was waving at Breyol. Breyol blinked in disbelief and he then zoomed in on the figure at the tree’s top.” '' Couple of typos. ''“Breyol once again blinked in confusion and continued to look at the tree’s top until he felt something crawl on his shoulder, he looked to his shoulder expecting some curious Rahi, only to find a brown hand resting itself with it’s black fingers hanging lazily. The hand was attached to a being, a very tall being that turned his gaze towards the large tree in the distance and leaned on Breyol’s shoulder with all his weight, causing Breyol to slightly lose his footing.” '' Missing commas, minor typo. From now on, I skip all other run-on sentences, “it’s”, and other syntax errors. ''“grit his teeth” '' A little too much repetition with this phrase. They’re too far apart to be repeated stylistically. Ok, so, now for an overall view. I’d classify this as a “slice of life” short story, one without a strong plot. These seem to have been gaining much popularity in CBW since Rando wrote his contest-winning “To Ascend”. Correct me if I’m wrong, that’s just my observation. In a slice of life, since the plot kind of just propels itself forward, character interaction is what glues it together. Your light banter between the Elmian and the Toa certainly achieves this. I can imagine your Toa completely confused and shocked by this strange fellow. Good bit of talking with Meyn as well at the end. Breyol and her have a fairly colourful conversation there, a nice way to wrap up this story. This was an enjoyable short story, yet not without some faults. I think all you have to do is go for a double check, either yourself, or with a beta reader. (Though I basically just beta’d your fic, lol) Ba-Koro Manuscript - MatoranIrik '''I finished this story'. This will be my shortest review. This, perhaps, was the most enjoyable of all the things I read while I took a break from editing on CBW. It's different. It's unique. This could be classified as prose, seeing it's written in a vaguely poetic format. The writing style you chose for this fits the mood very well. You're telling an ancient tale. I get the strong idea that it ''is ''an ancient tale. I honestly do not have much else to say about this. It's not my job to give you honeyed words of praise. If you know you wrote something well, then that is enough. Keep up the great work here!